There's a suggestive discrepancy between the French and English titles of this
wonderful essay film completed by Agnes Varda last year. It's a distinction that
tells us something about the French sense of community and the Anglo-American
sense of individuality -- concepts that are virtually built into the two
languages. Les glaneurs et la glaneuse can be roughly translated as "the
gleaners and the female gleaner," with the plural noun masculine only in the
sense that all French nouns are either masculine or feminine. The Gleaners and I
sets up an implicit opposition between "people who glean" and the filmmaker,
whereas Les glaneurs et la glaneuse links them, asserting that she's one
of them.

Gleaners gather up the leftovers of edible crops -- grain, fruit, vegetables --
after the harvesters are finished with their work. Varda la glaneuse films what
other filmmakers have left behind after their harvesting. The link between the
two activities is made graphic at one point when Varda gleans a potato with one
hand while filming it with the other. She keeps shifting between the kinds of
gleaners she finds -- in paintings as well as life -- and her own diverse
gleaning activities, such as bringing back souvenirs from Japan or collecting
memorabilia on her road trips while making this film. She also does such things
as film the veins in her hand to record the process of her aging.

NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The
Horizontal is the time in minutes.

Bitrate:

Audio

French
(Dolby Digital 2.0)

Subtitles

English,
None

Features

Release Information:Studio: Zeitgeist Video

Aspect Ratio:Original aspect Ratio 1.33:1

Edition Details:

• The
Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (59:22)
• Production Notes
• Filmography

• Liner
notes by New York Times film critic A.O. Scott

DVD Release Date: July 23rd, 2002Keep Case
Chapters: 22

Comments:

Not a fatally
poor image, but a weak one to be sure. Non-progressive (note combing in
last large capture) and sometimes appearing a little saturated, the
image has some artifacts and appears to have been taken from an analog
source.
I dislike the yellow subtitles, but applaud the addition of The
Gleaners and I: Two Years Later.

Good liner notes and a decent package if only the image were improved.
Well, we will take what we can get. The film is strongly recommended.